What nationalism means to Indian 'sedition' students

"My name is Umar Khalid and I am not a terrorist."
Mr Khalid is among five Indian students facing charges of sedition after organising a protest at Delhi's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). He and another student handed themselves over to the police on Tuesday night. Photographer Ronny Sen had earlier spoken to them about what nationalism means to them.
"They are saying I am an anti-national. If we are anti-nationals, I would say anti-nationals of the world unite. Our love for the people, our struggles, know no boundaries or borders," says Mr Khalid, a PhD student of history.
A section of the media had accused him of links with a Pakistan-based Islamist militant group, although the government later denied the reports.
"They [the government] are testing whether we will get scared and are playing these mind games. We accept that challenge and we will not get scared. We will fight back. Every student on our campus should voice their opinion without any fear of intimidation."
The five students, who had gone missing after they were named by police, resurfaced on the campus on Sunday night.
Critics have condemned the charges as an assault on freedom of expression, but government ministers have refused to back down, vowing to punish what they describe as "anti-national elements".

Anirban Bhattacharya was arrested along with Umar Khalid late on Tuesday.Anirban Bhattacharya says the government wants students to stop thinking

"As a Marxist I don't believe in nationalism, I believe in internationalism," says Mr Bhattacharya, who is doing his doctoral dissertation on tea garden workers.

"If someone asks me if I am a nationalist then I would say I am not. If anyone asks me if I am an anti-national then I think that question is not valid.

"Our government and the state want the students to stop thinking. We are living in a time when the moment you think, you become an anti-national."

Anant Prakash Narayan is a PhD student at the university's centre for law of governance.

"There is a debate throughout the world about what nationalism means. There are different definitions and viewpoints," he says.

"Some say a nation was formed first and then nationalism followed. Another view is that first there was nationalism and the nation was born from there.

"For some, nationalism is associated with symbols - you hoist a flag at the border and you are a nationalist. Most fascist governments tend to associate symbols with nationalism.

"Many nationalities co-exist in India. But [our] government is trying to unify everything and trying to kill the diversity.

"We want to move beyond the symbolism and a narrower idea of nationalism preached by many. I associate the idea of nationalism with the working class and their struggles, the fight of the oppressed and the Dalits [formerly known as untouchables] and other underprivileged people."

Rama Naga: "At JNU we fight for all people, including the Dalits and Muslims."

Rama Naga is a student of political science and the general secretary of the university's students' union.

"I don't think we should only love the country, we should also love the people of this country. That is what I understand by nationalism. At JNU we fight for all people, including the Dalits, Muslims and all marginalised sections of the society.

"The problem is that anyone who doesn't fit the ideas of nationalism laid down by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and their ideological mentors, the RSS, is labelled as anti-national."

Ashutosh Kumar says he wants a society where there are no boundaries

Ashutosh Kumar is a PhD student of international studies at JNU.

"As a student of Marxism we talk about the unity of workers from all across the world. When we say 'workers of the world unite', that's what I imagine when I imagine of nationalism," he says.

"We think of a society where there are no boundaries. Today we have a society where 1% of the people own and control everything and exploit the rest 99%.

"They are the ones who define the ideas of nationalism and force them on us. We are fighting against them. The BJP and the RSS believe that whoever is born in India and is Hindu by religion can be an Indian.

They're not gonna be acquitted, their ideology doesn't represent our Constitution and laws, our land of laws say you can't do antinational activities and they did, they questioned the judiciary and called our judiciary a murderer. The new videos already show the faces of these scums. Btw, the new videos show that proper digital cameras were used for video shoot and these cameras were very close to these scums, they're actually having this video shoot for their own. If these all videos are acquired then we can actually see what these scums have been doing, as we all know this is not the unique incident, they'vw been doing such activities from a long time.

"They are the ones who define the ideas of nationalism and force them on us. We are fighting against them. The BJP and the RSS believe that whoever is born in India and is Hindu by religion can be an Indian.

"We reject this idea of nationalism.

This is their sales pitch from the start... Stereotyping BJP with certain tags and then use that as an excuse to create civil unrest for their masters..With the exit of congress wholesale and a lack of future leader for congress from G Group ...commies see a space for some violent growth through civil unrest.

COMMUNIST: ANTI-NATIONALIST

The communist is primarily an anti-nationalist, secondly anti-God and tertially anti-Hindu. In socio political practice, however, he as well as the communist parties sound more anti-Hindu than anything else. The reason could be that to speak against nationalism would send a message of being anti-nationalist which might imply being anti-patriotic. On the other hand, to speak against God would hurt the sentiments of most people, including Muslims. The purpose therefore to be achieved is by speaking up against any sociopolitical movement which has a Hindu inspiration. In India, nationalism has to be aroused around the Hindu ethos.

The nation is looked upon as an instrument in the hands of the rich to exploit the poor. Appropriately, the communist anthem has been a song called the Internationale. The result is that the supranationalist and the internationalist are allies following the dictum that an enemy's enemy is a friend. Both are adversaries of nationalism and in India of the Hindu ethos, which is the mainspring of the nationalist sentiment.

Communists role during the British Rule It would be desirable to recall the track record of the communists in India during British days When one could afford to speak and work openly against nationalism. Go back to 9 August 1942 when Gandhi called upon the British to quit India. Overstreet and Windmiller in their book Communism in India, University of Berkeley, 1962, wrote the CPI(Communist Party of India) criticised the Quit India resolution as misguided and pernicious. Furthermore, Netaji Subhas and his movement were condemned as a fifth column. The Indian Socialists were described as the advance guard of the Japanese Army.

In those days of 1942 and after, communist praise was showered on the Muslim League. An example of such appreciation in the words of the CPI Central Committee member Sajjad Zaheer is: It is a good and fine thing, a happy augury, for Indian Muslims and for India as a whole that the Muslim League continues to grow and gather around it millions of our liberty-loving people. In the increasing strength and capacity of the League to move the Muslim masses on the path of progress and democracy lies the salvation of millions of our Muslim countrymen .... By mid-1942, the Party was expressly committed to the general view that India was a multinational entity, and that the unqualified right of self-determination should be granted to each nationality. A Party statement of July asked:. "What can be the basis of our national unity?" Recognition of the principles of self-determination including the right of separation, for all the nationalities that inhabit our great subcontinent.

Communists support Muslim League Agenda
A resolution of the September plenary meeting of the Central Committee definitively outlined the Party's new orientation. Its critical passage was as follows: Every section of the Indian people which has a contiguous territory as its homeland, common historical tradition, common language, culture, psychological make-up, and common economic life would be recognized as a distinct nationality with the right to exist as an autonomous state within the free Indian Union or federation and will have the right to secede from it if it may so desire ... Thus free India of tomorrow would be a federation or union of autonomous states of the various nationalities such as the Pathans, Western Punjabis(dominantly Muslims), Sikhs, Sindhis Hindustanis, Gujaratis, Bengalis, Assamese, Beharies, Oriyas, Andhras, Tamils, Karnatikis, Maharashtrians, Keralas, etc.

The resolution made it abundantly clear that those nationalities which were predominantly Muslim could secede. This would give to the Muslims wherever they are in an overwhelming majority in a contiguous territory which is their homeland, the right to for1l1 their autonomous states and even to separate if they so desire.

A year later, the Party was openly supporting Pakistan. Zaheer said that Congressmen generally fail to see the anti-imperialist, liberationist role of the Muslim League, fail to see that the demand for Muslim self-determination or Pakistan is a just, progressive and national demand, and is the positive expression of the very freedom and democracy for which Congressmen have striven and undergone so much suffering all these years.

The American authors wondered what could have prompted the CPI to be so openly pro-Muslim, so pro-Pakistani? They explain that: the policy may have been prompted in part by an intention to encourage not Muslim separatism alone but all regional particularism throughout the sub-continent. The regional linguistic units of India, while no one but the CPI termed them "nationalities," had in many cases shown strong particularist impulses on which a political party might easily capitalize.

Proposal for Sovereign Bengal
At one stage the Party openly proposed that Bengal be a sovereign country, in addition to India and Pakistan. It also hinted at independent status for the Sikhs. But it was only after the war that this larger import of the Party's policy-its identification with regional particularism emerged fully. The CPI's anti-Indianism did not end with supporting multiple partitions of India. In 1944, General Secretary P.C. Joshi wrote articles wherein he advocated not only the creation of Pakistan, but also an undivided sovereign Bengal. The scholars from California have written: In Bengal as a whole the majority of the population was Muslim but only by a slight margin, the eastern and northern districts being pre-dominantly Muslim while the others were predominantly Hindu. Earlier, the Party had proposed that Bengal be partitioned accordingly, but the League demanded that Bengal go to Pakistan. Now Joshi declared that Bengal should be a united sovereign and independent state, which would maintain relations of mutual assistance and friendly economic collaboration with both India and Pakistan. This solution was clearly advantageous to the League since thus it would again have influence over all of Bengal rather than over the Muslim-majority districts only. In fact, the new state would probably make common cause with Pakistan, but this Joshi did not mention.

Punjab to be part of Pakistan
The anti-Hindu real politik of the CPI had no limits. To quote: With regard to the other disputed area, the six eastern districts of Punjab(Central Punjab), Joshi proposed a solution which was equally advantageous to the Muslim League. In all the disputed districts the Sikhs constituted a large minority, and in all but one the Sikhs and Hindus together formed a majority, in but one were the Muslims in the majority, and that by only a small margin. Yet Joshi declared that the best solution would be to give all six districts to Pakistan, adding the suggestion that there be a "Muslim-Sikh Pact" which would guarantee the rights of the Sikhs under a Muslim government. The Sikhs have nothing to fear, he declared.

Pro-Chinese
Recall the Chinese aggression against India in 1962. Some members of the Communist Party of India felt that the Chinese were justified in their action which, in their view, was taken in self-defence against Indian aggression. Other members took the view that the opinion of Moscow was more correct, in that the Chinese should not have attacked. Neither faction was interested in how the Indians felt. Those who were pro-China left the CPI and formed a new party called the Communist Party of India(Marxist), now popularly known as the CPI(M). The pro-Russian faction remained with the CPI.
In 1964, when an intra-party debate was held, not much publicity was given. According to Dr. Sudipto Kaviraj (in his unpublished Ph.D. dissertation), a significant reason was the fear of being arrested and jailed for treason under the Defence of India Rules.

Communist Hypocrisy
That however does not justify the hypocrisy of most communists. Take for example, a family name of Chatterjee which is a modernised version of Chattopadhyaya, which in turn is the Bengali version of Chaturvedi; or whose family has studied the four vedas. Does not that sound very Hindu, if not also Brahmin and sana tan ? Again, consider the first name of Sita Ram. That is even more emphatically Hindu. Do not underrate the value of a name. It is a brand equity. It is among the first things a family gives to a baby soon after birth. Without it, the baby would not have an identity. How can one carry the identity of Sita Ram Chatterjee and, at the same time, spend one's time running down the Hindu ethos as communal, revivalist, obscurantist and what not?

Ideology are used less ,they best stat men had no ideology,they were realist .If JNU are producing such idiots then stop it funding , it work it to produce intellectual which help the government to administrate the country in a better way not to produce activist.I say reduce JNU budget by 50% and give that money to IISc,it will be better used and make a new Institute with the objective of making better public servants and better intellectual .

He became the Chief Minister of Kerala for the second time in 1967 as the leader of a seven-party coalition including the Muslim League. He wooed the Muslim League by promising them a district of their own. This time his tenure lasted for two and a half years, and he created a separate district called 'Malappuram' during this term as per prior agreement.

These retards are just an expendable front who would not dare come out in open without the support of very strong anti-India forces. We need to deal with them and the opportunist Congi party which is famous for supporting anti-India forces while in opposition.

As for these pussies yapping in the article, just throw them in jail and let the common criminals there have their way with them.

Acclaimed actor Anupam Kher is amongst signatories to an open letter condemning slogans against India and support for terrorists. Speaking with Rohit E David, Kher discussed why he thinks expression in universities needs a crucial curb, free speech as represented by Arvind Kejriwal, an ‘intolerance’ conspiracy against PM Modi – and how JNU student Umar Khalid might be playing a certain card:

Aren’t universities meant to be places for free and open debate?

Absolutely, they are places for open debates and freedom of speech – but not for people shouting slogans against India.

Universities are the place where we formulate the future of India. This is the youth which will form a free India – but if those places become hubs for certain students where they form views like those heard recently at JNU, then i think it needs to be looked into.

Students are usually irreverent – are we being over-sensitive now?

There is nothing called being oversensitive when it comes to an issue about India’s ruin.

Why is patriotism being questioned in a manner like this?

JNU student Umar Khalid says he’s never thought like a Muslim but he’s been pushed into this identity now – what’s your view?

He is playing the Muslim card by saying, ‘I’m Umar Khalid and i’m not a terrorist.’ This is a headlinegrabbing line.

For that matter, the person who is in jail right now, his name is not Umar Khalid – his name is Kanhaiya who represents one of our Gods, Lord Krishna. But he’s there.

Why have things become so polarised today?

Well, we were ruled by a certain party for a long time. Today, the people ruling this country for 60 years have been thrashed badly by a different party.

Now, we have Prime Minister Narendra Modi who does not take leave. I have never read that the PM has gone for a holiday to Kullu Manali or Kashmir. He spends his Diwali with jawans. He’s made two very important points with the Clean India campaign and toilets for women. We haven’t heard of corruption issues either during the last two years.

He is trying his level best to change India’s image outside India – and he’s succeeded to a large extent. I’m a person who travels a lot, i have seen that.

So, how do we counter him? By creating a situation saying that he is intolerant or that under his rule, the country has become intolerant – let’s discredit him by saying that his policies have failed.

But amidst the noise, activist Soni Sori has actually been attacked – instead of being silent, should the PM set an example by reaching out now?

I think what happened to Soni Sori is very shameful and sad. However, do we question the Prime Minister’s integrity if he has not commented on it? And how do we know that he has not reached out?

We had a Prime Minister for the last 10 years who didn’t answer anything – he was called the silent PM. Now, anything happens in the country, Modi should be held responsible. We have a chief minister in Delhi who openly calls the PM of the country a psychopath and coward – what is the biggest freedom of speech you need in this country?

Despite freedom of speech, do you feel Congress stayed silent on the Kashmiri Pandits’ plight?

Everybody stayed silent. I don’t want to blame any political party – all parties kept mum.

Kashmiri Pandits have quietly moved on. They have not picked up guns, not planted bombs, not resorted to violence. They’re still going through misery – but Pandits are resilient and aren’t a vote bank.

Some people have written that Anupam Kher has woken up to this now – but i was at the first Kashmiri Pandit refugee conference which happened in 1993.

We are living examples of being refugees in our own country.

Does the concept of secularism need a new look?

Well, these words ‘secularism’ or ‘intolerance’ are basically coined by certain sections of intellectuals. I’m in an industry where secularism is the most amazing thing. I’ve never felt that my light boy is from one religion or camera man is from another religion. Three Khans ruled this industry for the last 20 years, based on their hard work.

Better , snatch their Indian passport away and throw them in international waters

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Haha! They will become prized possessions of Uncle Sam. They'll smuggle themselves out of the country, seek asylum there and continue their anti-national activities. Such snakes can never be set free. Let them rot in the dungeons.

Better , snatch their Indian passport away and throw them in international waters

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Leave them like this ,do not give them any attention ,some day they will do something stupid and then attack them when they no public support.Just like pussy riot ,they we not given any attention to and then they went to the church and that killed all the public support for them.Then people supporting them look like anti India and then the cannot claim any of that shit that right wing is fascist, sexist and practice caste system.Strike the iron when it is the hottest.

Leave them like this ,do not give them any attention ,some day they will do something stupid and then attack them when they no public support.Just like pussy riot ,they we not given any attention to and then they went to the church and that killed all the public support for them.Then people supporting them look like anti India and then the cannot claim any of that shit that right wing is fascist, sexist and practice caste system.Strike the iron when it is the hottest.

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Iron is the hottest now. These people have been existing in the anti-national ecosystem since a long time. This was their "Pussy riot moment". Nobody except their handlers, funders and homo lovers support them. They are getting beaten up even in courts. This is their situation.
And you say we leave them alone? Never.

Well ,all the newspapers I read(Hindu and TOI plus some time Indian Express) are full of article by JNU professor about the students innocence add to that NDTV and Headlines Today are trying to defend them.Although majority of public see through it ,trust me they do even some thing more stupid , you are underestimating them .First bring a media accountability law were media have to report were they get the money from and which story the refuse to cover and why .That the real danger ,we cannot have a media that justify anti Indian activity

just leave them alone in the jungle with the jackals gnawing at their bones and they will forget all the tenets contemporary marxism has taught them.....trust me if the authorities tried that it would work

jholawalas are the biggest idiots the entirety of India has known,even worse than khaki chaddis or jihadis
they have seen the epic failures of USSR,North Korea,Pre-Deng Xiaoping China and last but not the least their own country messed up for 40 years or so by veiled communism of nehru
yet still they stick to this stupid ideology that should be in the dustbin of history.

btw do you know what commie end game is when( if ) they get power?
first they will allow all states to "secede" from the union
then they will export this diseased ideology to the "freed" states,so every state will have commie govt.
then they will enter a "coalition" of sorts and name this coalition Union of Indian Soviet Socialist republics
then followed by confiscating private property and razing all kinds of religous scriptures
TLR they are hypocritical fucks.